Kouri Richins trial witness arrested in online child sex sting

A witness from the Kouri Richins murder trial is now facing his own criminal case, a development that may stir questions about credibility without changing the Summit County jury’s March verdict. Robert Wilson Crozier, 47, of Midvale, testified in Park City on Feb. 27, and prosecutors had described him as the alleged drug dealer who supplied pills they said Richins used to kill her husband, Eric Richins, in 2022.

Crozier’s arrest came June 22 after an undercover investigator with the Box Elder County Attorney’s Office, working with the Utah Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, posed online as a 15-year-old girl. Investigators say Crozier asked the account holder her age, was told she was 15, and then continued sexualized messaging, sent an explicit image of himself, asked for images in return, and discussed sex acts he wanted to perform. Law enforcement says the two arranged an in-person meeting in Box Elder County, and Crozier traveled there by public transportation from Salt Lake County before he was taken into custody.

Officers reportedly found a needle in Crozier’s backpack after the arrest. Crozier is charged with two counts of enticing a minor to first-degree felony sexual activity, one count of distributing material harmful to a minor, two counts of enticing a minor to third-degree felony sexual activity, and one count of use or possession of drug paraphernalia. Those allegations are separate from the Richins case, which was tried before a Summit County jury and decided months earlier.

Richins was convicted on March 16 after three weeks of witness testimony and 42 prosecution witnesses. The case drew wide attention in Summit County and beyond because Richins, a Utah mother and real-estate agent, was accused of poisoning her husband and later writing a children’s book about grief. She faces 25 years to life in prison, and her defense filed a notice appealing her aggravated murder conviction on May 26; the case was then referred to the Utah Court of Appeals.

For Summit County, Crozier’s arrest is a reminder that a witness’s later conduct can raise fresh public scrutiny without undoing a verdict by itself. Courts and prosecutors will have to keep the two tracks separate: the new Box Elder County allegations against Crozier, and the Richins conviction returned in a Park City courtroom after a three-week trial.